NightScape Page 13

  When he was fifty-five and his eldest daughter turned thirty (she was married, with a daughter of her own), the laboratory made a mistake and released the information Anthony needed among a batch of old data that the lab felt was harmless. It wasn't Anthony who discovered the information, but instead a colleague two thousand miles away who had other reasons to look through the old data and recognized the significance of the type of rays that Anthony's father had been exposed to. Helped by his colleague's calculations, Anthony devised a treatment, tested it on computer models, subjected rats to the same type of rays, found that they developed the same rapid symptoms as his father had, gave the animals the treatment, and felt his pulse quicken when the symptoms disappeared as rapidly as they had come on.

  * * *

  With his wife next to him, Anthony stood outside his father's cryochamber as arrangements were made to thaw him. He feared that the technicians would make an error during the procedure (the word echoed from his youth), that his father wouldn't wake up.

  His muscles compacted as something hissed and the door swung open. The hatch slid out.

  Anthony's father looked the same as when he'd last seen him: naked, gaunt, and gray, suspended over a force field.

  "You thawed him that quickly?" Anthony asked.

  "It doesn't work if it isn't instantaneous."

  His father's chest moved up and down.

  "My God, he's alive," Anthony said. "He's actually..."

  But there wasn't time to marvel. The disease would be active again, racing to complete its destruction.

  Anthony hurriedly injected his father with the treatment. "We have to get him to a hospital."

  He stayed in his father's room, constantly monitoring his father's condition, injecting new doses of the treatment precisely on schedule. To his amazement, his father improved almost at once. The healthier color of his skin made obvious what the blood tests confirmed - the disease was retreating.

  Not that his father knew. One effect of being thawed was that the patient took several days to wake up. Anthony watched for a twitch of a finger, a flicker of an eyelid, to indicate that his father was regaining consciousness. After three days, he became worried enough to order another brain scan, but as his father was being put in the machine, a murmur made everyone stop.

  ".. .Where am I?" Anthony's father asked.

  "In a hospital. You're going to be fine."

  His father strained to focus on him.".. .Who..."

  "Your son."

  " No.... My son's... a child." Looking frightened, Anthony's father lost consciousness.

  The reaction wasn't unexpected. But Anthony had his own quite different reaction to deal with. While his father hadn't seen him age and hence didn't know who Anthony was, Anthony's father hadn't aged and hence looked exactly as Anthony remembered. The only problem was that Anthony's memory came from when he was nine, and now at the age of fifty-five, he looked at his thirty-two-year-old father, who wasn't much older than Anthony's son.

  * * *

  "Marian's dead?"

  Anthony reluctantly nodded. "Yes. A car accident."

  "When?"

  Anthony had trouble saying it. "Twenty-two years ago."

  "No."

  "I'm afraid it's true."

  "I've been frozen forty-six years ? No one told me what was going to happen."

  "We couldn't. You were unconscious. Near death." His father wept.

  * * *

  "Our house?"

  "Was sold a long time ago."

  "My friends?"

  Anthony looked a way.

  With a shudder, his father pressed his hands to his face. "It's worse than being dead."

  "No," Anthony said. "You heard the psychiatrist. Depression's a normal part of coming back. You're going to have to learn to live again."

  "Just like learning to walk again," his father said bitterly.

  "Your muscles never had a chance to atrophy. As far as your body's concerned, no time passed since you were frozen."

  "But as far as my mind goes? Learn to live again? That's something nobody should have to do."

  "Are you saying that Mom and I should have let you die? Our lives would have gone on just the same. Mom would have been killed whether you were frozen or you died. Nothing would have changed, except that you wouldn't be here now."

  " With your mother gone..."

  Anthony waited.

  "With my son gone.

  "I'm

  your son." "My son had his ninth birthday two weeks ago. I gave him a new computer game that I looked forward to playing with him. I'll never get to see him grow up."

  "To see me grow up. But I'm here now. We can make up for lost time."

  "Lost time." The words seemed like dust in his father's mouth.

  * * *

  "Dad" - it was the last time Anthony used that term-"this is your grandson Paul. These are your granddaughters Sally and Jane. And this is Jane's son Peter. Your great-grandson."

  Seeing his father's reaction to being introduced to grandchildren who were almost as old as he was, Anthony felt heartsick.

  "Forty-six years?

  But everything changed in a second," his father said. "It makes my head spin so much..." "I'll teach you," Anthony said. "I'll start with basics and explain what happened since you were frozen. I'll move you forward. Look, here are virtual videos of-"

  "What are virtual videos?"

  "Of news shows from back then. We'll watch them in sequence. We'll talk about them. Eventually, we'll get you up to the present."

  Anthony's father pointed toward the startlingly lifelike videos from forty-six years earlier." That's the present."

  * * *

  "Is there anything you'd like to do?"

  "Go to Marian."

  So Anthony drove him to the mausoleum, where his father stood for a long time in front of the niche that contained her urn.

  "One instant she's alive. The next..." Tears filled his father's eyes. "Take me home."

  But when Anthony headed north of the city, his father put a trembling hand on his shoulder. "No. You're taking the wrong direction."

  "But we live at-"

  "Home. I want to go home."

  So Anthony drove him back to the old neighborhood, where his father stared at the run-down house that he had once been proud to keep in perfect condition. Weeds filled the yard. Windows were broken. Porch steps were missing.

  "There used to be a lawn here," Anthony's father said. "I worked so hard to keep it immaculate."

  "I remember," Anthony said.

  "I taught my son how to do somersaults on it."

  "You taught me."

  "In an instant." His father sounded anguished. "All gone in an instant."

  * * *

  Anthony peered up from his breakfast of black coffee, seeing his father at the entrance to the kitchen. It had been two days since they'd spoken.

  "I want to tell you," his father said, "that I realize you made an enormous effort for me. I can only imagine the pain and sacrifice. I'm sorry if I'm.. .No matter how confused I feel, I want to thank you."

  Anthony managed to smile, comparing the wrinkle-free face across from him to the weary one that he'd seen in the mirror that morning. "I'm sorry, too. That you're having such a hard adjustment. All Mom and I thought of was, you were so sick. We were ready to do anything that would help you."

  "Your mother." Anthony's father needed a moment before he could continue. "Grief doesn't last just a couple of days."

  It was Anthony's turn to need a moment. He nodded. "I've had much of my life to try to adjust to Mom being gone, but I still miss her. You'll have a long hard time catching up to me."

  "I..."

  "Yes?"

  "I don't know what to do."

  "For starters, why don't you let me make you some breakfast." Anthony's wife was defending a case in court. "It'll be just the two of us. Do waffles sound okay? There's some syrup in that cupboard. How about orange juice?"

&nbs
p; * * *

  The first thing Anthony's father did was learn how to drive the new types of vehicles. Anthony believed this was a sign of improving mental health. But then he discovered that his father was using his mobility not to investigate his new world, instead to visit Marian's ashes in the mausoleum and to go to the once-pristine house that he'd owned forty-six years previously, a time period that to him was yesterday. Anthony had done something similar when he'd lied to his mother's second husband about being at the library when actually he'd been at the cryofirm visiting his father. It worried him.

  "I found a 'For Sale' sign at the house," his father said one evening at dinner. "I want to buy it."

  "But..." Anthony set down his fork. "The place is a wreck."

  "It won't be after I'm finished with it."

  Anthony felt as if he argued not with his father but with one of his children when they were determined to do something that he thought unwise.

  "I can't stay here," his father said. "I can't live with you for the rest of my life."

  "Why not? You're welcome."

  "A father and his grown-up son? We'll get in each other's way."

  "But we've gotten along so far."

  "I want to buy the house."

  Continuing to feel that he argued with his son, Anthony gave in as he always did. "All right, okay, fine. I'll help you get a loan. I'll help with the down payment. But if you're going to take on this kind of responsibility, you'll need a job."

  "That's something else I want to talk to you about."

  * * *

  His father used his maintenance skills to become a successful contractor whose specialty was restoring old-style homes to their former beauty. Other contractors tried to compete, but Anthony's father had an edge: he knew those houses inside and out. He'd helped build them when he was a teenager working on summer construction jobs. He'd maintained his when that kind of house was in its prime almost a half century earlier. Most important, he loved that old style of house.

  One house in particular - the house where he'd started to raise his family. As soon as the renovation was completed, he found antique furniture from the period. When Anthony visited, he was amazed by how closely the house resembled the way it had looked when he was a child. His father had arranged to have Marian's urn released to him. It sat on a shelf in a study off the living room. Next to it were framed pictures of Anthony and his mother when they'd been young, the year Anthony's father had gotten sick.

  His father found antique audio equipment from back then. The only songs he played were from that time. He even found an old computer and the game that he'd wanted to play with Anthony, teaching his great-grandson how to play it just as he'd already taught the little boy how to do somersaults on the lawn.

  * * *

  Anthony turned sixty. The hectic years of trying to save his father were behind him. He reduced his hours at the office. He followed an interest in gardening and taught himself to build a greenhouse. His father helped him.

  "I need to ask you something," his father said one afternoon when the project was almost completed.

  "You make it sound awfully serious."

  His father looked down at his calloused hands. "I have to ask your permission about something."

  "Permission?" Anthony's frown deepened his wrinkles.

  "Yes. I.. .It's been five years. I.. .Back then, you told me that I had to learn to live again."

  "You've been doing a good job of it," Anthony said.

  " I fought it for a long time." His father looked more uncomfortable.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know how to..."

  "Say it."

  "I loved your mother to the depth of my heart."

  Anthony nodded, pained with emotion.

  "I thought I'd die without her," his father said. "Five years. I never expected.. .I've met somebody. The sister of a man whose house I'm renovating. We've gotten to know each other, and.. .Well, I.. .What I need to ask is, would you object, would you see it as a betrayal of your mother if..."

  Anthony felt pressure in his tear ducts. "Would I object?" His eyes misted. "All I want is for you to be happy."

  * * *

  Anthony was the best man at his father's wedding. His stepmother was the same age as his daughters. The following summer, he had a half-brother sixty-one years younger than himself. It felt odd to see his father acting toward the baby in the same loving manner that his father had presumably acted toward him when he was a baby.

  At the celebration when the child was brought home from the hospital, several people asked Anthony if his wife was feeling ill. She looked wan.

  "She's been working hard on a big trial coming up," he said.

  The next day, she had a headache so bad that he took her to his clinic and had his staff do tests.

  The day after that, she was dead. The viral meningitis that killed her was so virulent that nothing could have been done to save her. The miracle was that neither Anthony nor anybody else in the family had caught it, especially the new baby.

  He felt drained. Plodding through his house, he tried to muster the energy to get through each day. The nights were harder. His father often came and sat with him, a young man next to an older one, doing his best to console him.

  Anthony visited his wife's grave every day. On the anniversary of her death, while picking flowers for her, he collapsed from a stroke. The incident left him paralyzed on his left side, in need of constant care. His children wanted to put him in a facility.

  "No," his father said. "It's my turn to watch over him."

  * * *

  So Anthony returned to the house where his youth had been wonderful until his father had gotten sick. During the many hours they spent together, his father asked Anthony to fill in more details of what had happened as Anthony had grown up: the arguments he'd had with the broker, his double shifts as a waiter, his first date with the woman who would be his wife.

  "Yes, I can see it," his father said.

  The next stroke reduced Anthony's intelligence to that of a nine-year-old. He didn't have the capacity to know that the computer on which he played a game with his father came from long ago. In fact, the game was the same one that his father had given him on his ninth birthday, two weeks before his father had gotten sick, the game that he'd never had a chance to play with his son.

  One morning, he no longer had a nine-year-old's ability to play the game.

  "His neurological functions are decreasing rapidly," the specialist said.

  "Nothing can be done?" Anthony's father asked.

  "I'm sorry. At this rate.. .In a couple of days.

  Anthony's father felt as if he had a stone in his stomach.

  "We'll make him as comfortable here as possible," the specialist said.

  "No. My son should die at home."

  * * *

  Anthony's father sat next to the bed, holding his son's frail hand, painfully reminded of having taken care of him when Anthony had been sick as a child. Now Anthony looked appallingly old for sixty-three. His breathing was shallow. His eyes were open, glassy, not registering anything.

  Anthony's children and grandchildren came to pay their last respects.

  "At least he'll be at peace," his second daughter said.

  Anthony's father couldn't bear it. "He didn't give up on me. I won't give up on him."

  * * *

  "That theory's been discredited," the specialist said.

  "It works."

  "In isolated cases, but-"

  "I'm one of them."

  "Of the few. At your father's age, he might not survive the procedure."

  "Are you refusing to make the arrangements?"

  "I'm trying to explain that with the expense and the risk-"

  "My son will be dead by tomorrow. Being frozen can't be worse than that. And as far as the expense goes, he worked hard. He saved his money. He can afford it."

  "But there's no guarantee a treatment will ever be developed for brain cel
ls as damaged as your son's are."

  "There's no guarantee it won't be developed, either." "He can't give his permission."

  "He doesn't need to. He made me his legal representative." "All the same, his children need to be consulted. There are issues of estate, a risk of a lawsuit."

  "I'll take care of his children. You take care of the arrangements."

  * * *

  They stared at him.

  Anthony's father suspected they resisted the idea because they didn't want to drain money from their inheritance. "Look, I'm begging. He'd have done this for you. He did it for me. For God's sake, you can't give up on him."

  They stared harder.

  "It's not going to cost you anything. I'll work harder and pay for it myself. I'll sign control of the estate over to you. All I want is, don't try to stop me."

  * * *

  Anthony's father stood outside the cryochamber, studying the stick-on plaque that he'd put on the hatch. It gave Anthony's name, his birthdate, when he'd had his first stroke, and when he'd been frozen. "Sweet dreams," it said at the bottom. "Wake up soon."

  "Soon" was a relative word, of course. Anthony had been frozen six years, and there was still no progress in a treatment. But that didn't mean there wouldn't be progress tomorrow or next month. There's always hope, Anthony's father thought. You've got to have hope.

  On a long narrow table in the middle of the corridor, there were tokens of affection left by loved ones of other patients: family photographs, a baseball glove, and a guitar pick. Anthony's father had left the disc of the computer game that he and Anthony had been playing. "We'll play it again," he'd promised.

  It was Anthony's father's birthday. He was forty-nine. He had gray in his sideburns, wrinkles in his forehead. I'll soon look like Anthony did when I woke up from being frozen and saw him leaning over me, he thought.

  He couldn't subdue the discouraging notion that one of these days he'd be the same age as Anthony when he'd been frozen. But now that he thought about it, maybe that notion wasn't so discouraging. If they found a treatment that year, and they woke Anthony up, and the treatment worked...We'd both be sixty-six. We could grow old together.